Dead Bodies on Doorsteps

Have you ever sat a death watch for a loved one?  Sat for hours with the dead?  I highly recommend it.

When my grandmother was dying, I felt so useless.  She was in a hospital where others tended most of her needs.  But still, I was there 18-20 hours/day for the last couple of weeks; shared duty with family who didn’t want to/couldn’t spend much time with her while I saw it as the least we could do for one who gave us all life.  When she died, they called the mortuary for us.  I didn’t want to leave her alone even though I knew it would be hours before the mortuary would come.  You see, they like to move the dead after everyone is asleep in hospitals/nursing homes, certainly after visiting hours; protecting us from the “grossness of death”.  I knew that but I asked to stay.  My aunt tried to stay but she just couldn’t; too freaked out.

I watched the sun set out the window and over the body of my grandmother and I felt a growing sense of calm and peace.  I realized the lights in the room were not on and I didn’t bother to get up and turn them on.  I sat in the moonlight with her until the morticians arrived.  They were a little startled to find me sitting there in the dim moonlight with her but they understand these things.  They asked to turn on the lights and respectfully gathered her in blankets to move her to a gurney.  They gave me a moment for a last goodbye (they’d have given more time if I’d needed it) and off they went down the hall.

While the morticians were gathering her up, I mentioned my own guilt for not tending her as I know she tended those before her.  To my own amazement, they offered to assist me with that duty right there in the hospital or that I could go with them to the mortuary and assist there.  I was too young back when.  I could not have performed these duties on my own as I was never taught how.  I thought these morticians inordinately kind in their offers.  Like the modern wimp I am, I declined.  I regret that decision because I could have done one last thing for her and I missed an incredible opportunity to learn.

We are wimpy when it comes to many things these days and death and dead bodies are certainly amongst the things we get wimpy about.  The government’s job is to protect health and safety; not feelings.  There are many, many GROSS things in life that simply aren’t all that hazardous to our health and these days we put far more in the “gross” category than we once did.  We have moved the death of loved ones from simply the last stage of life, a passing, a chance to make amends by tending in death when we may not have respected in life to something “gross” and to be outsourced.

When I was a kid, our dead family members were brought home, cleaned up; the casket was built or bought and brought home in the truck.  Family cleaned up the dead relative, dressed him or her, applied makeup for women sometimes, and laid them out in the casket which was often set up on the dining room table.  The body MIGHT be embalmed but often was not.  The body would lie in the casket for viewing for a week or more so family could come to say goodbye.

But we are also fascinated with death, especially deaths of those we don’t know or who are infamous.  Many of the earliest photographs are of the dead because taking a photo took a long exposure time for the film and movement ruined the photo so the dead were perfect subjects.  See the dead in 1880 Tombstone, the Dalton gang, and Bill Dolan.  Jesse James seems to have gotten a bit more respect, laid out peacefully with closed eyes.  We are still fascinated by the dead as evidenced by the modern Bodies Exhibition.  Death is a simple fact of life and how we treat the dead is a matter of custom and choice.

Several recent animal seizure cases have mentioned finding dead animals so I think it warrants considering where we are with even human death and how we treat the human dead before we consider the animal dead.

Back in 1992, in Richmond, TX… 

A dispute over the costs ensued and the mortician returned the body about 3 days after death, leaving it partially draped in a sheet, questionably embalmed, leaning against the wall/doorframe.  I remember all the uproar about this incident.  The mortician was charged with abuse of a corpse.  The Houston Chronicle covered the case.  See the prosecution’s position and the defense’s reasoning.  It even made Ann Landers column.  The funeral director was ACQUITTED.

Returning the body was tacky and obnoxious and a lot of things but it was not a health hazard which is what the abuse of corpse statute was originally based upon, as it should have been.

Well, 1992, hm, that was nearly 20 years ago.

2008: The family called 911, the ambulance arrived and took the man to the ambulance where he died.  “That is when the family said the EMTs, who were still parked in the street, brought Suliveres' dead body back up the sidewalk, up the porch stairs, and back to the front door.”  The family was upset.

My sympathies go out to these families because we don’t teach the young what to do when death arrives as it inevitably does and not always in a tidy hospital or other circumstances where most of the “gross” details are wrangled by those who do know what to do with the dead body.  However, it is simply a gross factor; not a hazardous situation.  The dead have to be disposed of and it isn’t inherently someone else’s responsibility to deal with our dead family members.  What we do with dead family members is sometimes what they expressed to be their wishes; otherwise, it is up to us to make the decisions and the choices and there are actually quite a few decisions to be made; many options to choose from.  Unfortunately, we often find out that these are OUR decisions and OUR obligations in the above manner; in a time of grief and while emotional.

However, the courts have rather consistently refused to call dead bodies “property”.  There’s a little dance the courts do to avoid doing so and I always enjoy reading the cases because they make little sense.  The result is that the bodies are actually the obligation of the dead persons estate, sort of.  Our, the family’s, responsibility when we step up.  Beyond that, due to the health issues that CAN develop if dead bodies are merely left in the streets as they once were, the government then makes provisions concerning them.  Unfortunately, those provisions are not well known by most.

As science has progressed and we’ve discovered that dead bodies don’t pose nearly as much of a health hazard as was once thought, the law had mostly lost interest in legislating what to do with the dead.  Of late, there has been a renewed interest.  That interest is due to the amounts of drugs and chemicals in dead bodies rather than the issue of (to put it bluntly) rotting corpses themselves.  So, a family is still largely free to make the decisions of how to dispose of their dead relatives so long as they do not put the public health at risk from the drugs and chemicals exuded and released as the body rots and decomposes.  All the rest and the occasional “gasp” of public sentiment is merely us being wimps about death generally.

Although dead body stories rarely make the news, some do and we have a visceral reaction to them.  Here’s one where a mortician double parked, body in the vehicle, and the vehicle got towed.  Morticians just aren’t freaked out by the dead bodies and there are many others who deal with death who are not either.  When my mother died, I carried her ashes in a carry on bag on a plane to ensure they got home to be buried.  I’ll admit it seemed a little freaky at first but, to me, it just falls into that category of things we don’t do frequently in life rather than being somehow gross.

I’m older now and I’ve dealt with death a few times.  I’ve also had and raised a child.  Gross?  Kids are WAY more gross than dead bodies and they are gross on a daily basis, especially just after birth when they pee, poop, and puke all over you and any thing else near them and you get used to it because it’s repetitive and you have to.  As to death, we need to be rational and get over the knee jerk gross factor.

Death is damned inconvenient as my mother used to say.  It’s inconvenient because you have to deal with the dead bodies and emotions.  When it comes to human dead, it can get complicated; especially when the dead body lands on your doorstep.  Dead animals are much the same as those bodies on doorsteps.

What does one do with dead animals?  Veterinarians put them in freezers until the van arrives every week or so to haul the dead off to dumps and crematoriums.  We bury our pets in yards.  Dairy farmers have to dig huge pits for cows.  Wild animals die, are foraged by other animals, and rot in place.  But, in reality, dead animals on doorsteps is worthy of more than one post of it’s own.  I think I’ll do an entry on the dead animals we’ve voluntarily taken upon ourselves; those like the ones that the Houston SPCA and SPCA of Texas are trying to use for their own purposes and to put a burr up everyone's you know what to raise outrage where there should be none.

Have you told your family today what you want done with your dead body?

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